Republicans need to quickly learn the politics driving the transgender agenda, Louie Gohmert told a Capitol Hill audience June 9.
“There is no biological science that supports the transgender agenda,” said Rep. Louie Gohmert (R.-Texas), who told the reporters and staffers gathered for the weekly Conversations with Conservatives meeting in the Rayburn House Office Building.
“There is no science of any kind,” Gohmert said, adding, “But, I have come to find out there is one science that supports the transgender agenda — political science.”
GOP leaders can’t ignore Obama’s support for transgender ideology, added Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R.-Kansas).
Obama’s deputies began pushing the transgender agenda in 2015, but the GOP leadership isn’t pushing back, he said. “What did we do about this issue in 2014? 2015? Nothing. Nothing in the House. No response whatsoever,” he said. “Values voters stay home [during elections] and this is why.”
Huelskamp said Donald J. Trump can energize conservative voters by supporting conservatives on abortion, marriage, and the transgender agenda.
So far, Trump has skirted the transgender issue, saying the matter should be left to the states. That’s supported by two-thirds of Americans, according to a Rasmussen poll. In North Carolina, GOP Gov. Pat McCrory has taken a strong stand against Obama’s transgender agenda, which has sharply improved his polling numbers.
Gohmert urged conservatives to examine the claims made by transgender activists. For example, he said, Republicans supporting the transgender program should be aware of a study by Sweden’s Koralinski Institute, conducted 1973 to 2003 with individuals. The ptaients who underwent sex reassignment therapy and or surgery later had a suicide rate 20 times that of the general population, Gohmert said, adding that he was quoting Dr. Paul McHugh, the former top psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins University Medical School.
The congressman did not mention it, but the same study also showed increase rates of depression, a higher mortality rate and a higher rate of participation in the criminal justice system for women who try to change into men.
Huelskamp, who was appointed by Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R.-Wis.) to his House Republican Steering Committee, said he was disappointed with the House Republican response to President Barack Obama’s transgender agenda.
Obama’s Executive Order 13672 bans from doing business with the federal government any vendor who made hiring decisions influenced by an applicant’s sexual lifestyle or non-biological gender identity. There is no exemption for religious individuals or organizations.
Many GOP legislators backed an amendment filed by Rep. Sean P. Maloney (D.-N.Y.) that would have taken the language of EO 13672 and codified it in federal law. The Maloney Amendment passed with 43 Republican congressmen, including two committee chairman, two running for U.S. Senate, five members of the Steering Committee and Rep. Greg Walden (R.-Oregon), the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, the political wing of House Republicans.
Freedom Caucus member Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R.-S.C.) said Capitol Hill conservatives noticed that among the 43 Republicans supporting Mahoney, many are in GOP House leadership and have been favored recipients of campaign support from the top party leaders.
“We noticed,” he said. “We have done a little kicking around, looking at the numbers and the disproportionate percent of NRCC money that went to those folks,” he said.
“Its one reason why I stopped supporting the NRCC—because I see where the money goes,” he said. Top leaders “are asking us to give money to an entity that turned around and [which] gives our money to people who vote exactly opposite of us.”
Conversations with Conservatives is a monthly forum hosted by the House Freedom Caucus and the Heritage Foundation. The forum, hosted by Genevieve Wood, brings reporters and staffers face-to-face with House conservatives.
In general, the transgender ideology says government should push every American to validate every person’s choice of created “gender identity,” even though a man who wants to be a woman is still a man by every known scientific measure of evolutionary life. For example, an Oregon law recently allowed a jury to award $60,00 t0 a transgender teacher because other teachers declined to use the teacher’s preferred pronoun, which is “they” rather than “him” or “her.” New York City has also establish similar forced-speech rules.
The ideology’s claim that the government must enforce a new right to “gender identity” also means that the governments must ignore and often dismantle many civic rules that evolved to help the two distinct sexes — men and boys, women and girls — meet their legally equal, but different and complementary, needs. For example, the transgender ideological demand means that single-sex bathrooms and locker rooms must opened up to people of the opposite sex, regardless of age, and without any verification of created “gender identity.”
As a result, it is now an offense in Washington State to ask a man in a woman’s bathroom if he thinks he is male or female. Similarly, Obama and gay advocacy groups have slammed a popular North Carolina law, dubbed HB2, because it requires people to undergo medical procedures before they can use a bathroom reserved for the opposite sex. Teenage boys who say they are girls are also allowed to compete against girl athletes — and bump them off the winner’s podium.
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